From North Dakota...

Dearest Clara,

You will raise a lot of eyebrows when you tell people where you’re from.  Nineteen months old and you’re already from  everywhere it seems---but I promise you the eyebrows will really pop off when you tell people that your mother grew up in North Dakota . . . Fargo to be precise.  Most people have never met anyone from North Dakota (although with all the news of oil, a lot more people seem to know about it now).  And you’ll hear a lot of jokes about being in the prairie and the wilderness.  But for all that we’ve traveled and seen, I have to say that some of the people and landscapes nearest and dearest to my heart have been from this state.

Here what I learned in my years growing up there:

• Wide open spaces are beautiful: And usually, they are beautiful because they are wide and open.  There is a reason people write songs about them.  The ability to see horizon to horizon is rare as we continue to pack ourselves into this world.  Sometimes, it can feel a bit lonely as you realize how small you are in comparison to the size of what is out there.  But most of the time I find them freeing and inspiring.  You might find yourself small, but you realize how big you can still be.
• Water is unpredictable: You would think that I would learn this lesson at the ocean, but the first time I realized the power of water, and then realized it again and again, was living next to the Red River that ebbs and flows according to what the season brings.  Water brings many gifts, but its power can come quickly and take them all away just as fast.  Don’t feel like you can outsmart water, ever.  You can be prepared though.
• Sweet and salty go together: Long before the salted caramel trend, a little shop in Fargo called Widman’s Candy, where so many close girlfriends worked in my high school years, caught on to the unique flavor that combining sweet and salty brings.  They hand-dipped their potato chips, made from North Dakota potatoes of course, in chocolate just so.  I always stop for a box when I’m home.  I always buy them with the intention of giving them as gifts, but somehow, they find their way onto my dessert plate instead.  Buy extra.
• Be part of a community: Many don’t realize it but North Dakota was once called out in a political science study for its civic engagement, which I learned about in university.  Once I thought about it, I realized it was true.  People belong to things here: bowling teams, churches, book clubs, the PTA, you name it.  And that means that they belong in general.  Be part of things, build things, and participate in your community.  After all, it will be what you make it.
• It's nice to be polite: Sometimes people in Fargo can really kill you with kindness.  They call you by name, they wish you a nice day, they go out of their way to help you at the DMV, they track down that extra set of tickets to the show you wanted to see.  It might seem overwhelming at first, almost as if it’s not genuine.  But it is---that need to be polite comes from the right place. When you are tempted to take the quicker road, take a minute to do the more polite thing.  You’ll make someone’s day, and you’ll feel better yourself.  Double-win.

We just returned from our first trip to North Dakota with you, full of sunshine and wheat fields, but this December we’ll be back for the holidays.  Winter here brings a whole new set of lessons---the first one being to bundle up! I suppose we should already start looking for a coat for you!

All my love,

Mom

The Beauty of Nowhere

I live kind of in the middle of nowhere. Which is a surprising fact if you’ve met me in real life. Friends have dropped their jaws and commented on my surprising nearness to agriculture. You see, I’m a city girl, tried and true: I like fancy coffee and large libraries, and the occasional shopping jaunt. But upon moving back from Bangladesh, it just so happened that my husband was offered a great job that just happened to be in the middle of nowhere. He drives on several gravel roads everyday just to get to work, which means I’ve given up on ever having a clean car. Technically I suppose we don’t live in the absolute middle of nowhere, but we are on the outskirts of a very small town. As someone who has always lived in the city (or at least in the suburbs) this is about as foreign as living in Bangladesh. It’s different in a new way. I like to say we’re ‘enjoying the experience,’ because an experience it is; there’s literally a cornfield in my backyard. A cornfield!

Most of the time, I don’t mind living in the middle of nowhere: I get to work from home, I rarely have to drive anywhere, gas and groceries are cheaper here.  But sometimes, sometimes I miss fancy coffee so much it makes my teeth ache.  Sometimes I think I might like to be the kind of woman who sits at an outdoor café with a book and a cup of coffee, just watching the world go by.  Sometimes I wish for a post office with one of those automated machines and a library whose collection wouldn’t fit in my parents' basement. I miss the air inside an art museum, how you can just about breathe in the beauty.  I crave a Sephora and an impulse nail polish purchase.

And then I jump in the car (to console myself with a cup of gas station iced coffee) or look out the window.  And I am just struck.  Struck still by the view.  The whiny voice in my head stops cold, my breathe catches, and I just stand there, staring. The views out here, the beauty of nature, the colors of the sunset, the vastness of the sky; it takes the air right out of my lungs.  I stop thinking about overpriced coffee and salespeople on commission.  And I breathe in the air as if I’m standing among priceless works of art; I have the same humbling sensation, the same whisper that creeps through my bones, the same tingle in my soul. I’m seeing, I’m surrounded, by color and brilliance and something so beautiful and strong that it passes the mundane and edges closer and closer towards sacred.

The sky reminds me of a Georgia O’Keefe painting hanging in The Art Institute in Chicago.  I don’t remember what it is called, but it’s a huge field of blue and white or white and blue depending on your perspective.  There is no horizon, it’s just sky, and it is magnificent.  Out here, the sky is so much more than just atmosphere. It dominates the landscape, it IS the landscape.  The clouds hang heavy, as if I could reach them if I only had a ladder.  In the city, clouds seem far away and less sturdy, more of a haze.  The clouds in my sky have depth and dimension.  I imagine if I had my ladder and reached up and poked one it would bounce back like a freshly baked cake.

In my backyard, just below the clouds, is a field of corn.  It’s less green than I imagine the farmer would like (we’ve been a little short on rain here), but the golden tops of the stalks remind me of wheat in Kansas.  During the day, as the light changes the same view twists into a hundred different varieties.  Sometimes the stalks are crisp and clear in the sunlight and heat. Sometimes they’re a little hazy in the wind. In the evening, they’re bathed in the pink of a country sunset.  Again, I’m reminded of a painting, or in this case a series, Claude Monet’s Haystacks.  Monet was fascinated by light, and how it changed everything, and so he painted the same subject, a haystack, in myriad lights and seasons (he did the same with water lilies).

The corn will be gone before long, and my view as I look out my back window will be completely different.  I can’t imagine it will be anymore breathtaking than the field of gold I’m currently enjoying and obsessively photographing.  But that’s the great thing about art, it’s always surprising you.

The F Words: Anica Rissi

Cats and kittens, get ready. After something of a summer hiatus, The F Words is back - and with a super special treat. Joining us today is my dear friend Anica Mrose Rissi, young adult fiction editor extraordinaire. (Fun fact: back when I was a recruiter, I placed Anica in her very first job at Scholastic. Kismet!) In addition to having her finger on the pulse of what the youngins want, Anica is a marvelous cook and my personal ice cream guru, and I'm very excited that she's decided to share her chocolate sorbet recipe with us here today. But first? The interview! Tell us a bit about your day job. I'm an executive editor at Simon Pulse, a YA imprint of Simon & Schuster. I've always been a storyteller and story collector, so this is a dream job for me. I get to work with words, plots, characters, and ideas, and lots of creative people.

How did you learn to cook? When we were kids, my big brother and I each had one night per week when it was our job to cook dinner for the family. My brother always made quiche--because he liked it, but I think also because he knew I didn't--and I made salad and pasta or soup, and usually cake from a box. My mother quickly tired of eating the box cakes and pointed out that brownies from scratch are almost as simple to make and much, much tastier. I was probably in fourth grade then. I've been baking up a storm ever since.

Part two of this is: I learned to cook by playing with my food — adding spices, extracts, and other interesting flavors to my hot cocoa; throwing a little of this and a little of that into the soup, the pasta sauce, or the pancake batter. My mother uses cooking as a creative outlet and is always experimenting, so I learned from her example to view recipes as inspirations and rough starting points, not as strict formulas. My mother's cooking style was inspired by her Italian grandmother, whose instructions were more practical than precise. "Use a cheese that would taste good," Nana might say. "Add enough flour and cook it until it's done." I like this attitude — cooking is fun, eating is fun, and playing with flavors is fun. There's no need to be precious about it.

Do you prefer to cook alone, or with friends and family? Alone. My kitchen is tiny, and I like to put on music, dance around, and get lost in what I'm doing. But there are collaborative cooking situations that I enjoy, such as making muffins with my 5-year-old niece or cooking anything at all with my friend Terra in her not-New-York-sized kitchen. I love my friends, but just as I don't want to live or travel with most of them, I don't really want to cook with most of them either. Eating together is the fun part.

What’s your favorite thing to make? I do more baking than cooking. I like making food to share, and there's something about baked goods (savory or sweet) that seems more treat-like to me. At this time of year, I make a lot of ice creams and mix a lot of beverages (once you have a basic comfort level with custards and cocktails, there's room for infinite experimentation and tasty surprises/mistakes). I have a lot of fun getting creative with pizza toppings.

If you had to choose one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life, which would it be? I probably could live on raw seasonal vegetables, tea, cheese, and ice cream (and, I guess, vitamin supplements) for a year. I realize this is not a cuisine and that my projected life span is much longer than that. Does "local cuisine" count as an answer? Or "ginger cuisine"? (Ginger is the best ingredient ever.) Yeah, sorry, I am going to fail this question.

What recipe, cuisine or technique scares the crap out of you? I'm not afraid of cooking meat, but I have zero meat skills. I was a vegetarian for eleven years and the only meat I cook at home is duck bacon, which is a good pizza topping. (Try apple-gruyere-shallot-thyme-duck bacon-black pepper-chive pizza, or potato-rosemary-parmesan-gruyere-shallot-mustard-duck bacon pizza.)

How do you think your relationships with your family have affected your relationship to food and cooking? Huh. Suddenly this feels like a therapy session. I was raised to eat whatever I was served, eat all of it, and say nice things about it. When I am invited to someone's home, my instinct is still to take seconds and thirds as a way to show appreciation for the food being served and the person serving it, just as I felt encouraged to do at my grandparents' table. This affects what kind of guest and host I am in multiple ways that we really don't need to get into on the internet. More interesting to me is how food is a story passed to and changed by each generation, how in the repetition and retelling, basic elements of a specific dish or tradition may stay the same, but the details and side plots are continuously reshaped and rewoven, adjusted according to tastes and logistics and to incorporate new narrative threads.

Even today, home cooking is strongly associated with women’s traditional place in the family and society. How do you reconcile your own love of the kitchen with your outlook on gender roles? Honestly, I don't sweat it. I know a lot of men who spend more time in the kitchen than I do (or than their wives do) and I don't think of or experience cooking or baking as gendered activities within my friend group. Cooking is pure pleasure for me, and when I don't want to do it, I don't do it.

What riles me up are the gender role expectations and inequalities I see in kitchen cleanup. Most of my female guests are much more likely than the males to offer to help clear or wash the dishes, and I see more women than men doing those chores in the homes that I visit.

Tell us a bit about the recipe you’re sharing. When did you first make it, and why? What do you love about it? Since it's summer, let's make chocolate sorbet. It's cold, rich, and intensely chocolatey. This sorbet is delicious on its own or paired with vanilla ice cream or unsweetened whipped cream or, say, toasted almond cake.

I've been making chocolate sorbet for years and I've probably never made it the same way twice. I suggest adding bourbon below but you can leave that out completely or substitute rum, Pernod, Frangelico, Ginger Snap, or another liquor. And feel free to adjust the cocoa-to-sugar proportions. I like this sorbet more bitter than sweet, but you might want to use up to 1 cup of sugar...or of vanilla sugar.... You could also stir in up to 6 oz. of finely chopped bittersweet chocolate after you remove the mixture from the heat. (If you do that, you'll want to whisk super vigorously or run the liquid through a blender for a few seconds before you chill it.) Play with it!

Chocolate Sorbet

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Anica recommends Valhrona) 1/3 cup sugar Pinch of salt 2 cups water, boiling 1/4 tsp. vanilla 1 to 2 tbs. good Bourbon

Combine the cocoa powder, sugar and salt in a heavy saucepan. Whisk in the boiling water. Place the pan over medium heat and stir in the vanilla and Bourbon. (Of you're forgoing the booze, up the vanilla to 1/2 tsp.)

Transfer the mixture to a bowl, cover it, and chill it thoroughly (likely about 4 hours of fridge time). Freeze in an ice cream maker just before serving.

Makes one quart.

watching the sunrise

It’s been two weeks since I’ve written in this place and in the moments that have passed between then and now, I’ve gotten married. It seems fitting that this be an essay that includes a little bit of romance. When James, my husband, and I first began dating, we were interns on an island off the coast of southern Georgia. James was working on a sea turtle conservation project and one of his daily tasks was to survey the beach at dawn for nests that had been laid overnight. Every morning of that summer he started up a finicky golf cart and rode along the beach, searching for turtle tracks as he went. On more than one morning, I went along for the ride. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes and trying hard not to think about the full-day of work I had ahead of me, I would climb into the cart next to him. Moments when we came across newly laid nests had their own kind of magic, but it was the sunrises that really got me out of bed.

On one morning, another intern came along with us. She was less than enthusiastic about the early hours and when James exclaimed over the rising sun she turned to him and said,

“You’ve seen one sunrise, you’ve seen them all.”

In his typical style, James met her grumpiness with his own brand of unrelenting cheer. Grinning, he replied, simply, “I don’t think so.” Love is a tricky thing---and recognizing it can be more difficult than fairy tales would have us believe---but if there’s one moment when I realized I loved James, it’s that one. It’s a risky story to tell. Stories about watching the sun rise anywhere, let alone on remote beaches, can slide quickly into the realm of Hallmark greeting cards and can make even a hopeless romantic cringe. But the truth remains: I couldn’t help loving a man that appreciated a good sunrise.

We’ve just returned from a few days away on an island at a significantly more northern latitude. A minimoon, we’ve been calling it. Each morning that we were away we woke up to watch the sunrise. Just the two of us and the egrets and the reflection of the sun on the water.

We’re back in the city now and with a new challenge to wake up to watch the sunrise, at least sometimes.

Photo by sunrise-enthusiast, James Casey.

The Streets of Lisbon, The Views of Belem

I haven't been overseas since the beginning of 2012, which feels like the longest lapse between adventures in a decade. But my life in San Francisco is in flux and requires me to stay put. I suppose with various changes in my life, each day at home feels unfamiliar in its own way, so it's *almost* like I'm wandering in a new place, or at least experiencing similar sensations I feel when I roam the streets of a different country. But I feel the itch to explore again. To see colors I'm not used to seeing, like the oranges on the rooftops of the buildings in Lisbon. To smell whiffs of pasteis de nata, a flaky, golden Portuguese pastry I can almost taste right now. To turn a corner, to explore an alleyway, to find a picturesque hilltop miradouro from which to gaze—and dream.

Portugal, I'm thinking of you.

xo, Cheri

[gallery link="file"]

Memories of Mammaries

 My friend Dorothy is a "real" writer; that is, she does it for a living. She writes for Metro newspapers and is a published co-author of a hilarious dating book,  Dating Makes You Want to Die. I asked her to contribute a story about her and her mom, to kick-start an initiative to explore other mother/daughter relationships here.  When my mom first passed away, Dorothy was there with much-needed support, including the titles of several books she thought I might find some comfort from. This piece is equally funny and reflective, just like Dorothy herself. by Dorothy Robinson

When I was newly pregnant with my baby boy Sam, my 74-year-old mother was diagnosed with cancer in both breasts. This was something of a surprise for everyone; breast cancer doesn't run in our family and Mom was diligent about having a yearly mammogram. It appeared without warning, laying claim to both her breasts. And it was fast, growing so big that just cutting the cancer out wouldn't be an option. She'd have to remove both breasts, the sooner the better.

When you undergo a mastectomy, most of the recovery is done at home. It isn't pretty.  To help with the healing process, the surgeons insert a tube in the hole where your breasts used to be, which then dangles outside out of your body. At the bottom of the tube is a suction device, resembling a tiny, clear, plastic grenade. For days and weeks after the breast is removed, the body shoots fluid to where it used to be to help clean the wound; lost, the soupy mess has nowhere to go and collects under the skin. The drains help to clear this and keep infection and pain at bay. But someone recovering from surgery needs help emptying those little grenades and keeping a log of the output. And that would be me. My 76-year-old father could hardly say the word "breast" and my brother, who lives down the street from my parents, gave me a look that said, "I fix their DVD player every week, you are doing this."

Before I heaved my pregnant self to Delaware to help while my mother recovered, I did some reading on how to help a woman who was going to lose her breasts. My mother had weathered health scares before, most notably a heart valve replacement---a much more invasive procedure, which she got through with little drama or setbacks. I figured this recovery would follow the same path. My research suggested that women undergoing a double mastectomy should get therapy to help with the psychological effects of losing their breasts. This seemed kind of nutty to me, as my mother was way past needing them. Maybe other, younger women would be affected by such a loss but not my Steel Magnolia of a mother.  A former judge and Southern WASP, she is the human embodiment of those ubiquitous "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters.

But this wasn't the case. The night before she was to undergo her surgery, I expected a usual night at home with my parents: Scotch for them, a discussion on an interesting article from that day’s Wall Street Journal with maybe a little basic cable thrown in. Instead, my mother was inflamed with sadness and anger. She wept. She yelled. She couldn't be calmed.  Wide-eyed at this woman I didn't know, I pleaded with her to take a Xanax, to have a drink---anything to calm her anxiety.  I was scared. This was not my mother. In my mind, it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't a foot or an arm. Just two lumps of flesh that had done their job. They had to go so she could live. It was a simple swap, I figured, and one that would let her continue to do important things in life, like being able to meet her new grandson. I texted my husband, who remained back at our home in New York to work, that I was surprised at her emotions. Our minister came over and, along with my brother, we held hands as a family in the living room and said a little prayer. Finally calm, she sheepishly asked me to take a photo of her breasts. Sheepishly, I did.

The surgery went well. And 24-hours after the doctors removed her breasts, she returned home, with me by her side. The nurses in the hospital rued this in-and-out policy. "A man comes in with prostate problems, he stays for four days. You get your boobs removed, and you go home in less than a day," one nurse said to us with a shake of her head, as she showed me how to clean my mother’s drains. For a week, I stood next to my sad, incomplete mother, while cells swirled within my body, creating my baby. I emptied out her blood and bits of flesh, keeping a diligent log for the nurses who would swing by our home to check on her progress.

When, six months later, baby Sam made his appearance, my mother was back to her usual self, healthy and cancer free. She has an angry scar across her chest (no matter how good the surgeon, the scar from a double mastectomy always looks like the operation was done in a back alley) and two pairs of "falsies," as she calls them in her Southern lilt, to put in her clothing to help give her shape. We can now even joke about her operation.  When she first held her week-old grandson, he tried to peck at her chest, like all hungry newborns do. "You're barking up the wrong tree there, buddy," she laughed.  That night, surged with hormones and gratitude, I wept at our good fortune.

Recently, while still on maternity leave, I spent some time with my parents at their little beach cottage to escape the oppressive heat of Brooklyn. After some trepidation at the thought of feeding the baby in front of my proper father, I finally just went for it. Soon, cocktail hour would mean sitting on the porch, my folks enjoying gin and tonics; Sam, milk.

You can read thousands of essays on the meaning of breasts, but until you place your sweet baby in front of them, you will never understand how important they are to your personhood, to your sense of self, to being a woman. To lose them is to lose a part of you; a part of your history. Finally, I understood my mother’s sadness. Perhaps if we were a more dramatic family, maybe we would have really focused on the significance of breasts and a new baby when our matriarch had just lost hers, and discuss it, like they do in therapy. Perhaps everyone did but we didn't say it out loud.  Instead, we just enjoyed each other's company under the hazy July sun. The only one who really cared about boobs or no boobs was Sam, who spent his evenings sucking happily while my mother and her new falsies looked on.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

There is a house---a camp, really---on a lake in New Hampshire that is owned by my husband's extended family. It houses many generations of strong women; a matriarchal household in every sense of the word. Bought in 1948 by my husband's great uncle and his wife, many of the women who now run the house during the summer and collectively supervise their kids running through the woods and swimming in the lake grew up traipsing through the same woods and swimming in the same waters. It's a family with deep roots and a well-documented tree, but one that is also made of people who have been brought in and enmeshed through skinny dips and grilled hot dogs. Stand in the kitchen long enough, and you'll hear one of the women say "did you hear about the time when..." before the rest of them break out in peals of laughter that carry down to the lake and across the water. The more time you spend here, the more clearly the ghosts materialize and give a sense of tradition to the rhythm of the day that has survived with the minimal necessary evolutions for over 60 years. Claude and Phyllis (the couple who bought camp) skinny dipping early in the morning and serving hot dogs and milkshakes for lunch; the bouncing Jack Russell terrier begging to be let in by appearing in two second intervals in the open top half of the Dutch door on the porch (after chasing a squirrel into its hole and getting his face stuck in its burrow); my mother-in-law first learning to waterski by sitting on the shoulders of her cousin as the boat pulled them both up. In these stories, the men are key players to be sure, but their narratives remain peripheral. The driving characters of the stories of camp are the women. I am weaving myself into the fabric of this family, first as a girlfriend, then a wife---a friend, a mother, an aunt. The Christmas before I married Jordy, the ladies of camp bought me a beach towel with my name embroidered on it. It was to be left here for the winters, awaiting my return each July. I took the gift as a statement: just as there was a place in the hall linen closet for my new towel, there was a place in this family for me. I've come here this week for a family vacation. My in-laws are here, and my husband has a rare break from work. This is more than a vacation, though. By coming here, I get to reconnect with women (and their kids) who I see maybe twice per year, but to whom I feel viscerally connected. They've held me in hard times, called me sister in happy times, and loved me unconditionally through both. For 64 years, the women of camp have gathered by the water, surrounded by bronzed children of various ages to discuss our lives, to discuss current events, to discuss what to make for dinner, to discuss what we're reading. We call ourselves "the ladies of the beach."

It's funny to have such a strong connection to the history of a family that is not biologically mine (in the abbreviation-language of camp, I am an NBR---a Non-Blood Relative). In many ways, I think that spending time with Jordy's family on land that they have shared for so long binds me to his family in a more raw and fundamental way than any other could. I learned to water ski the same way and in the same water that my husband and his entire family learned; my daughter jumps off the same rocks that my mother-in-law jumped off as a little girl, and we all make a daily pilgrimage to the ice cream shop where 2 generations have worked during the summer. The oldest of the third generation will be old enough to continue the tradition next year, and we are all eagerly awaiting her employment (though our waistlines may disagree). Connecting with Jordy's family this way encourages me to love him (and them) even more deeply, and in a sense for more time. Though my time moving forward is limited, I feel like with each summer here, I get time both in the present, and also in the past. It's a richer, augmented experience when you're layering summer on top of summer on top of summer. I recently picked up The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home by George Howe Colt. It's a story of a summer house, like this one, and the family that inhabits it. I just started the book, but I love the way that the house and the land are intertwined with the family and its history. The author's memories of his grandparents are similar to the memories that Jordy has, and likely similar to the memories that Emi will have as she grows up. It was handed to me as soon as I arrived, looking for something to read. I just finished 1Q84, and needed something to thumb through at the beach in-between discussions of the latest article in People or Frank Rich's column that morning. Reading is an integral weft in the social fabric of the ladies at camp. We love books, we love to read, and we love to talk about what we're reading. Here's a sample of what's made an appearance at the beach this week. If some of the reviews seem short, it's because I made people tell me what they were reading as they were running through the house on their way to the beach, the grocery store, or to watch the Olympics (the only time, save for the U.S. Open, that the television is allowed on).

Lulu, 65 The matriarch of this house, Lulu, has made it her business to extend her family. She is the wife of Claude and Phyllis' younger son, John, and is at the center (though some days she would like to be removed from it) of camp life. A fellow only child, Lulu's philosophy is that there are always enough beds, and we can always make dinner stretch to accommodate a few more. Lulu is an honorary grandmother to most of the kids here, and is an honorary mother to all of us. She is the grandmother who waterskis and swears like a sailor and finishes the crossword in the Sunday Times, and she makes it her business to keep alive the history of camp (and with it, her husband's family). When you come to camp, you inevitably hear the stories of this place, and Lulu is often the one telling them. Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichel "I love it. It's a memoir of her childhood with a very crazy mother and how food became so important in her life. She comes from a really crazy family, and she just by happenstance gets connected to a family that loves food, and she discovers that when the world isn't working well, you can make a good meal and all is suddenly right with the world."

Nancy, 70 Nancy's husband, Ricky, was raised with John, Lulu's husband. Both of their fathers were off fighting in WWII, and their mothers, Dot and Phyllis, moved in together. Both nurses, they were best friends, and each had two boys. They got double coupons and worked opposite shifts so that while one worked, the other watched all of the children. They shared jobs---Dot hated darning, so Phyllis did that, but Dot did all of the maintenance. The husbands were in the same medical corps in Italy. Ricky's family used to rent the camp next door when Claude and Phyllis bought this camp, and Nancy first came up to the lake when she and Ricky became engaged.

Nancy, through sheer luck, stayed up here the summer that I brought newly-born Emi to camp. She would rock Emi as Emi screamed and screamed, and she would sit with me through the seemingly never-ending nursing sessions telling me stories of her own family, in and out of which members of our family would dance. Asked about her favorite things about camp, she says, "The thing that always struck me was the intergenerational thing, the cocktail hour with the great grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and kids, sharing stories and sharing time. All of the ages and stages and kids, and everyone just kind of took care of their own kids and other kids---kind of like how it is now. Oh, and coming down to the beach with all of these very professional, intelligent, highly educated women sharing stories from smutty magazines."

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy "It's a book that I never in a million years thought I would read (even though I'm an English teacher), but my book club decided they would do it. I am fully immersed in it. The first 100 or so pages were difficult just because of the many characters and getting the names straight (and feeling intimidated by the fact that it's War and Peace). But once you get over that, Tolstoy is so fluid and so all-encompassing and he understands human nature and the big picture so well, but he includes detail to make it seem here and now. The writing is a narrative, so you read it for a story, but you also get a sense of the history and the philosophical and ethical issues that people thought about at that time in Russia (and even now): the nobility and the peasants; why people go to war. You're also brought back by the everydayness of the characters that he creates, and they become real. It's a great read. We were supposed to read 200 pages and meet and read another 200 pages, but I've almost finished it because I've become so involved with it."

Emily, 37 Emily and I became fast friends when she started dating Jordy's cousin, Evan (Lulu's son). She is one of the funniest people I know. She was married here at the lake, and I was one of her bridesmaids. She returned the favor for me when I married Jordy. Her daughters, 4 1/2 and 2 years old, sandwich Emi in age, and the three of them are quite a sight to behold when they are galavanting together on the beach. Emily now does the Sunday crossword with Lulu, and she's the only person I know who can beat Jordy at Scrabble.

"I just finished Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. I loved it up until the very end, but I couldn't put it down---I was sneaking reads during work. It was a page turner, and you didn't know what was happening. It was a good mystery, and how you felt about the characters changed throughout the book at different points. I read The Art of Racing in the Rain at the beginning of the summer. It's written from the point of view of a dog---[she looks at me raising my eyebrows and goes, "I know, but it's really good."] the dog is this smart being, but because of how he was created (with a floppy tongue, no thumbs)---he's stuck with his thoughts and knowledge of things but no way to express himself. I just started reading Sharp Objects."

Alice and Claudia, 10 I've known Alice and Claudia (sisters, daughters of Jordy's cousin) since they were toddlers, speaking in one-word sentences and eager to investigate my shoes every time I came to their house. Watching them grow has been astonishing; if ever there were two more interesting 10 year olds, I don't know them. Alice is wonderfully imaginative and creative. This week, she made a magic wand for her brother out of a twig that she had stripped the bark off of in a striped pattern, and a vine woven around and anchored with pine sap. Claudia is thoughtful and funny and up for anything. She's also incredibly creative, and her wrists are buried in brightly colored friendship bracelets that she's made. The two sisters, along with their brother and cousins, are delighted to invite Emi to play with them, and are old enough to be able to tell her stories when she's older about her first years here.

Alice The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, Meg Wolitzer "It's about this dude who plays Scrabble, and he has a power in his fingers to read things with his fingertips. They're in a tournament in Florida. I got it for my birthday from Grandma and Grandpa. It was on the Chautauqua reading list."

Claudia The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan "It's the second in a series the Heros of Olympus, which is the sequel series to the Percy Jackson series. It's about a boy, Percy Jackson, who's memory is taken by Hera/Juno, and he loses 8 months of his life with the wolf Lupa and her pack, learning to fight. Then he leaves the wolves and journeys to the Roman demigod camp and he's originally from the Greek demigod camp. I read the first one in the series and it was about a boy, Jason, who gets the same thing but goes from the Roman camp to the Greek camp, and he has to unite the camps before the prophesy can come true. It's so good, I've read it seven times."

After a bit of questioning, Claudia admits she's read it seven times because she's already read (or can't find) the other books in the top of the boathouse, where the girls sleep. I promise to take her to town tomorrow to get a new book to read at the local bookstore. She'll read it and give it to her sister and cousins---I imagine that it will end up in one of the bookshelves in the house, waiting for Emi to grow into it. As for our trip into town, I can't promise anything, but it will likely include an ice cream cone. I know all too well that in a blink, Claudia will be old enough to drive herself, and in another one old enough for me to take her kids for her while she catches a moment to read on the beach.

Creating Sabbath

When I was growing up, Sundays were church days for my family. We'd get up in the morning—later than on school days, but somehow, it still felt early—and elbow one another out of the way of the bathroom mirror for primping and toothbrushing. Then, we'd pack into the car and head to Sunday school and worship services. Afterwards, we'd grumble about the sermon running long and pile into the car again with hungry bellies. We usually had lunch out at some sort of "family restaurant" (bonus points if they served raspberry iced tea and had a free salad bar) and then went home for naps and homework. At the time, I didn't give much thought to what a Sabbath could be or should be. For us, it included a lot of eating, a little resting and praying, and a good dose of getting in each others' way. Sometimes I wondered what other kids did on Sunday mornings, but mostly I didn't question the shape of my week.

Fast forward through college and graduate school, and my Sabbath doesn't happen on Sundays anymore. After converting to Judaism, I began observing the Jewish Sabbath ("Shabbat"), which takes place from Sundown on Friday to Sundown on Saturday. My Sabbath not only takes place on a different day of the week, but the characteristics of the day itself are a little different too. While there are many different ways to observe Shabbat, mine centers around a festive evening meal on Friday and includes a lot of reading and resting on Saturday.

Perhaps one of the most curious differences between my childhood Sabbath and my current practice is that I no longer use phones, computers, or transportation during the "Sabbath" portion of my weekend. This probably sounds odd. And to be honest, I've never really come up with a satisfying explanation or justification of this practice. There are as many reasons for rituals as there are people who practice them, and perhaps more.

But soon after Shabbat took hold of my Friday nights and Saturdays—at first out of curiosity and then, perhaps, out of inertia—it became a nonnegotiable. It's a strange thing, to commit to doing almost nothing for a whole night and day each week. It's just a bit too long, actually, so that by Saturday evening I'm often a little restless, bored, or uncomfortable, more than ready to return to my regularly scheduled programming.

But at the busiest and most stressful moments during the week, I find that I try to conjure up something of the essence of the most recent Shabbat. It has something to do with quiet and stillness and do-nothing time. Ironically, my do-nothing time is often my most creative thinking time. While I'm not-writing, I can't help but conjure up a million different ideas to write about. Given this extra breathing room, my mind starts to play. Sure enough, I forget most of my "brilliant" ideas by Sunday morning, or as soon as I'm poised at the desk and ready to type my little heart out. But at least I know they're there, somewhere beneath the surface of daily life.

These days, I don't have to wonder what other kids do on Sunday mornings, but I do wonder a lot about how others practice "Sabbath." When and how do you like to rest? What's the shape of your weekend? Whether you've taken a sabbatical year or found ways to incorporate stillness into each day, I'd love to know, what does "Sabbath" mean to you?

Destiny's Child

I have been thinking a lot about destiny lately.  Whenever people hear the story of how my husband and I came to be together, they say something to the effect of, “It’s like you were fated to be married!”  When I describe my 180-degree career shift from social worker to florist, I get, “It was always what you were supposed to do!”  And there is the inevitable, “This was absolutely meant to be!” concerning the subject of my finally becoming a mother.  Having said all that, and acknowledging that my life feels nothing short of wondrous at times, I am not actually sure I believe in destiny.  I think what I mostly believe in is making choices. As a person with some fairly significant control issues, I battle with the notion that things are in any way preordained.  When confronting a particularly challenging set of circumstances, the concept of life unfurling “just as it should,” and according to some magical plan beyond my comprehension, sounds amazing.  I assert there is some truth to this - I have an indistinct sense that everything always “works out in the end.”  But I feel strongly that I have a hand in crafting the result and that, depending on the situation, my influence is anywhere from 85-99% of it.  The remaining 1-15% (author’s note: these numbers are not rooted in any scientific process) I suppose is some amalgamation of karma (at least my white, Jewish, suburban notion of karma) and dumb luck.  I never said it was sexy.

My husband and I have a really good thing going.  For his part, he is lovely, bright, thoughtful, totally friggin’ hilarious and a very involved father.  We share the same life goals, appreciate almost all the same cultural phenomena and have similar values around politics, social justice and generally how we want to function in the world.  How I landed him seems like magic, but the bottom line is I chose him.

We first met at summer camp, as teenagers.  Flash forward 17 years and we ended up married with a ridiculously adorable infant daughter.  This story is so ripe for the “meant to be” trope, it’s virtually impossible to resist.  And as much as I would like to wrap it up in a tidy bow, it feels critically important to appreciate how pro-active we both had to be to get here:

1)   How I knew Michael in the first place: As a child, I chose to participate in a Labor Zionist youth movement that offered a sleep-away summer camp.  Believe me, this is a highly specific choice.

2)   How I was in a position to date him: At age 34, I chose to leave my first marriage, recognizing that I had made a mistake.

3)   How we reconnected: I chose to reach out to him on Facebook, hoping we still might have some things in common.

4)   How the relationship developed: I chose to pursue our connection, despite being separated by 3000 miles.  I then chose to move across the country to give it a real chance.

5)   How we were married: I chose to make a life with someone that I not only loved but who treated me with respect and with whom I was a great match.

Don’t get me wrong: there was and is all manner of getting the vapors and birds chirping and stars trailing across the night sky.  However, the bones of what we have done and what we are doing together are the minute and monumental choices.  The future of our relationship depends entirely on these choices.  Are we going to be kind to one another?  Are we going to listen?  Are we going to stick around when things get tough?  Are we going to share domestic responsibilities . . . some of this is HUGE and some of it seems so piddly, I realize.  I would argue that every little choice piles onto the heap that tips the scales in favor of a partnership.

I was fortunate that someone like Michael was available for my choosing when I was ready.  It was also providence that our timing worked out just right.  But almost everything since has been instrumental and emotional elbow grease.

Chance has also played a role in my career.  I have been “lucky” to have a supportive husband, willing to bear the risk of my starting a business (and doing so smack in the middle of a global financial crisis!).  But I chose to leave a stable, essentially recession-proof career to go out on my own.  And every day I choose not to go back to a more secure position that carries fancy health benefits, so that I might create something more meaningful for myself.

The miniature cherub that lives in our home?  When it comes to her, things get a bit more complicated.  The relevant choice is that I decided to pursue and endure fertility treatments when it became clear that we would not have a child without assistance.  The staggering fortune is that it worked, and we had a healthy child.  Speaking of staggering fortune, we were also lucky to have the resources at our disposal for the procedures.  I will also say that had it not worked, I would have chosen among many other (equally taxing) options to have a child, all of which involve a healthy dose of rolling the dice.  Soon enough, we will be confronted with this crazy fusion of intention and chance if we decide to expand our family again.

The things of which I am most proud in my life — marriage, work, baby — have required a combination giving it up to the fates and making the arduous decisions of a warrior.  It gives me great solace to imagine that I am the author of my own future and that I don’t have to wait for “blessings” to be happy.  The good news is that means we can all change our lives for the better . . . it simply starts with choosing to believe that it’s feasible.

What I Learned at the Rock Concert

Part 1 Last week I went to a concert with my parents and my husband.  We saw Crosby Stills & Nash. And it was awesome.  It took me half an hour to figure out which one was Stills and which was Nash, but it was still awesome. My husband and I were definitely in the minority, most of the audience was over the age of fifty.  But they sure knew how to have a good time!

The woman sitting directly in front of me was having an especially good time.  Every time the band played one of her favorite songs, she would jump up from her seat and dance in place.  Sometimes other people around us were standing up, clapping and dancing, but often she was the only one on her feet.  But she didn’t care.  She didn’t care that she was the only one in our section dancing, or even standing up.  She was celebrating this moment, this song, this experience.

Of course her celebration was basically blocking my view.  Since her seat was right in front of mine, whenever she got up to dance, I could only see a third of CSN. At one point my husband looked over and gave me a sad faced kind of grimace, apologizing that I couldn’t see.  But truthfully, I didn’t care. This woman was so darn happy; it made me happy just to be around her.  She was getting such joy from the music and the performance; I couldn’t help but be affected by it.  Whenever she would get up and dance, I couldn’t stop smiling.

This woman was probably older than my mom, and all I could think was, I want to be that happy, that excited, that rocking in thirty years.  I want to be the kind of grown-up that celebrates life and grabs onto joy whenever its around.  I want to rejoice in those pure blissful moments.  I want to stand up at a concert and sing and dance and clap along with the band.  I want all those whippersnappers to look at me in awe and say ‘that is one groovy old lady’.

But nothing happens overnight right?  I can’t expect to wake up at 60 with all the answers and a convenient pair of rose tinted glasses on the nightstand. So I’m starting now, today; I’m making new habits.  First, I’m going to dance more; just put on a record in the middle of the afternoon and boogie in my living room. Second, I’m going to make a conscious effort to recognize the joy in my life.  To be in the moment and appreciate the bliss that finds me every day. I'm going to celebrate my life.

And in thirty years, I’m going to rock that concert.

From Cannes, France...

Dearest Clara, August is for going to the beach, isn't it? I didn't necessarily used to think so always, but the older I get, the more I miss the salt water air and carefreeness that comes with hot summer days and cool ocean water.  We were lucky this year - the beach in Cannes called our name.  Maybe if we're lucky next year, it will call again.  Here are a couple of things I've learned from this beautiful coast:

• Rosé goes with everything: Everything.  Remember how I said prosecco goes with everything in Italy? Well here you can’t go wrong with rosé.  Lunch, dinner, aperitif, fish, chicken, anything adn everything . . . when in doubt, go pink.  And you can even throw in an ice cube or two.
• There will prettier girls sometimes: At least, that’s what you’ll think, even though it is not true.  And sometimes there will be thinner girls and ones with more money, a deeper tan, cooler sunglasses . . . This is a place where often people have more, and it’s easy to get caught up in comparisons.  But believe your mother on this one, you are just as beautiful as any person out there and it will be your confidence that makes you so.  Whether your bathing suit costs $20 or $200, the ocean water will be just as refreshing.  And when you come home, you’ll wonder why you did all that silly worrying.
• You can have cheese for dinner:  Really.  Our hosts are such wonderful entertainers and chefs, and evenings around the dinner table featured so many good things that were on endless parade.  Yet, one of my favorite meals is the night we were all tired, and we had “cheese for dinner”.  Of course, there were several different platters of all kinds, and accompanying breads, and baskets of fresh figs and honey.  The milk and the creams that go into French cheeses are so good, and the process still true to what it always has been.  Sometimes, something simple can steal the show – give it space to do so every once in a while.  And don’t forget the rosé.
• Enjoy a quiet night in the garden: Cannes has a way of feeling hectic sometimes, but it’s amazing how many pockets of solitude you can find, and absolutely everything that is beautiful and fragrant seems to grow here.  I guess that’s why so many perfumes are from here.  Enjoy these plants and smells…the lavender…the olive trees…the herbs…it all comes together in such a unique combination.  You’ll come back in the future just for that experience all over again.
• Go to the beach: That’s what you’re there for.  Whether it’s a little cove off the road, or in a full on beach club, go to the beach and get in the water.  Nothing sparkles quite like the ocean in the south of France – this is your chance to be part of it.

And of course, don’t forget your sunscreen.

All my love,

Mom

A Half Moon Land Between Sky and Sea…

Liguria, Italy.

My Memories.

When I was little, my grandparents bought a house in Sestri Levante, a small village located along the Ligurian Riviera, in Italy. Since then, I like to take refuge there every time I can, losing myself in thoughts and simply relaxing. It’s easy for me to reach this half moon of land between sky and sea, as it’s only a two-hour car ride from Milan. Yet, this place seems so far away too, perhaps lost somewhere in my memories. I still remember when I was four or five, and my grandma used to push me around Sestri on my stroller because I was too lazy to walk. Well, she never suspected that I only played lazy, but I actually loved knowing I was the center of her world.

 

Nowadays I like travelling throughout the region with my husband, in search for hidden corners in a salt and sun smelling blooming nature. Liguria is a dream land to me, rich in intimate and unique details which suddenly appear to your side and fascinate you for their beauty---ancient defense towers stretching out towards the sky, small churches, chestnut woods, miles of walks with gorgeous panoramic views on sea and inland. It is the land where I spent my summers as a child and nourished my first innocent hopes and dreams.

Celebrating The Land - A Famous Italian Poet and His Words.

Prose writer, editor and translator who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1975, Eugenio Montale was born in Genoa. He spent his summers at the family villa in a small village nearby the Ligurian Riviera called Monterosso, and later images from its harsh landscape found their way into his poetry.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A white dove has landed me among headstones, under spires where the sky nests. Dawns and lights in air; I've loved the sun, colors of honey, now I crave the dark, I want the smoldering fire, this tomb that doesn't soar, your stare that dares it to. 

Collected Poems, 1920-1954, translation by Jonathan Galassi.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To slump at noon thought-sick and pale under the scorching garden wall, to hear a snake scrape past, the blackbirds creak in the dry thorn thicket, the brushwood brake.

Between tufts of vetch, in the cracks of the ground to spy out the ants’ long lines of march; now they reach the top of a crumb-sized mound, the lines break, they stumble into a ditch.

To observe between the leaves the pulse beneath the sea’s scaly skin, while from the dry cliffs the cicada calls like a knife on the grinder’s stone.

And going into the sun’s blaze once more, to feel, with sad surprise how all life and its battles is in this walk alongside a wall topped with sharp bits of glass from broken bottles.

“Meriggiare pallido e assorto”, by Eugenio Montale, translation by Millicent Bell.

Liguria Through My Eyes.

 

 

How It Began

When I am growing up, my grandmother often prints out thick packets of stories and legends about women who did things and sends them to me in large manila envelopes. After a while I have history and myth all mixed up, but I know more about Sacagawea and Joan of Arc, Jane Austen and the goddess Athena, than any of my friends in Mrs. Smith’s first grade classroom.

Every summer we make the drive to North Carolina to visit my grandparents. This time, I walk into the room where my sister and I always sleep and instead of the familiar stack of printed-out pages there is a small hardback book sitting on the bedside table. The cover shows a collage of train tickets, magazine photographs of the Eiffel Tower, and plastic figurines of women in traditional southern French dress. I like it right away. I have always judged books by their covers.

Postcards from France is a series of articles written back to her American hometown newspaper from a young woman spending a year living in Valence, a small city in the southeast province of Savoie. I finish the book in one day. I read it again the next year, and again, and again. Inside the back cover, in the careful, blocky handwriting of a child just starting to write, I inscribe, “This is a great book!”

From then on, I am completely obsessed with the idea of spending a year in France---of travelling the entire country, becoming fluent in another language, and making unforgettable friends. I will do this, too. And I do, in my own way.

YWRB: Dare

By Amy Turn Sharp I always pick dare.

Truth or Dare?

I am game. Game on.

Let's do this thing. I will get naked. I will kiss you madly.

I will run through the streets screaming.

Whatever. Why?

I think it is because it is easier than letting you inside of my mind. Inside of all the scary truths I carry like coins.

I think it's important to find your other side of the coin, the people who always pick truth.

They are not weanies. They are powerful totems.

Find them and hold them like lovers.

Teach each other how to be passionately truthful and daring.

Most of us are lacking in one side of the coin.

Truth or Dare.

Hold hands and walk into the future.

Encourage and take a chance.

It's all we've got baby.

The chance of a life well lived.

I dare you.

Conversations with Myself as an Old Woman

By Eliza DeaconKilimanjaro, Tanzania

Gnarled hands that are surprisingly pale, folded in her lap. Capable hands, although she never liked them despite their ability to reach one note over an octave on the piano. She’s always stayed out of the sun, not for vanity, but because she doesn’t like the sun or the heat---funny for someone who has spent the last 60 years of her life in Africa. You can look like leathery old strips of biltong otherwise, the intense heat of mid-day etched deep into crinkles and creases. Nice faces though, lived-in, they look like they belong here.

Here she became the person she never thought she was before---hidden away, in a too-tall lanky body, by insecurities and doubt, never entirely comfortable in the skin she was born with. It wasn’t so simple, but then this continent never is; it tests and challenges, weeds the strong of heart from those who shy from its extremes. It can drive you mad and it’s easy to stumble, the dusty earth is often rock-strewn and rarely flat.

She often used to wonder if this was a place to grow old; she never wanted to feel fear and it’s here sometimes---visits at night with the winds, with shiftas and waizi . . . thieves who come in when the moon is low, skulking around the perimeters in whispers. The dogs bark and the old Maasai askaris keep them at bay, but they’re still out there. And fear is an unwelcome guest, especially when you know your limitations.

She and the man she loves know of nowhere else to go. This place they call home is just that and has claimed them wholly. They have both been spat off the continent before, thrown out of the land they were bound to. For him, because the colour of his skin was deemed wrong, despite having the right passport. For her, because she was told she had just been there too long. But where else to go? Where else do you find the life that offers you the most extraordinary freedom, whilst always with cruel accuracy reminding you that this freedom comes at a price?

At times she wonders at how she can still find the thrill in that particularly African golden light that comes just before dark, that one-hour grace period when everything else is forgotten and the Gods smile down on all. And the moment when walking on the farm, she startles a wild animal and it’s frozen, staring with wide eyes, preserved in that drawn-out moment until neither can bear it any longer and the spell is broken.

She remembers things: bare feet on wet grass, stepping carefully in the darkness, the smell of sweet wild jasmine and night sounds in her soul, feeling giddy with wildness in the shadow of the mountain. And she remembers a dress covered in a thousand sparkling sequins. As they drove down the long farm road towards a moonlit gathering, it filled the inside of the car with colour, like stars that no-one could see but them.She files away all these memories, carries them carefully in a treasure box, revisits them at sunset when, sitting on the veranda with a glass in hand, the world slows down and sinking back into the past is easy and without regret. Old now, but there is so much that is good here. As much as you can ‘belong’, they know that they have been marked, carry the scars as well as the laughter. There is permanence and stability in its indelible stain and it ties them to that dusty African soil, a compass that always points them home.

The End of the Summer

TS Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock’s life was “measured out in coffee spoons.” My life has been measured out in back-to-schools. Every year of my life has featured a significant back-to-school transition. Even before I started kindergarten, my family’s routine shifted when my mother, a professor, went back to school. During the three years of my adult life when I was neither in school nor teaching, my wife was working in college student affairs, where the back-to-school season is strenuous, and feels like a marathon. Some of my most distinct memories are back-to-school related. I remember walking with my mother to my first day of kindergarten, and the very cool bag in which I carried my supplies (it featured an applique pencil).  I remember going to my high school before school started to pick up my schedule and walk through it several times so I could master the cavernous layout of the sixties-era monolith.  I will never forget (and I realize that phrase is overused, but in this case, it’s actually true) watching my parents drive away from my college dorm and feeling the strangest combination of feelings---excitement and fear and an intense sadness.  My first day of student teaching created a confusion of feelings.  Being neither teacher nor student left me in a sort of transitory space, and made the day more difficult to process.

Now, as an adult, one who is entering her eighth year of full-time teaching, I no longer find the back-to-school experience particularly momentous. There’s the change in routine, and a new pack of red pens, and new faces in the classroom, but it feels familiar, almost comforting. What is significant now is the end of the summer. It begins right about now as my teaching friends in southern states go back to work and it continues until I begin again right after Labor Day.

Last summer was a blur of parenting a newborn. I remember little beyond being exhausted and sometimes stopping for ice cream when we put the baby in the car to coax him to sleep through the rhythm of the driving. In a way, it was refreshing to know I could do no more than simply tend to him and my wife. That often meant that a day’s big accomplishment was picking up groceries or cleaning the bathroom.

This summer, however, I had plans. Yet, much like every summer, the season is winding down and I feel as though I have accomplished little of those plans. I’ve read books, but not as many as I’d like. My son and I have gone on many wonderful outings, but there have also been days when weather or timing have prevented us from doing anything memorable. Work, which should have felt far away, has encroached on my leisure through e-mails, the occasional meeting, and the fact that a teacher’s job is never done---there are always lessons to be tweaked or new texts to be considered.

It’s easy to let August turn into a Month of Regret. I ask myself what I could have done differently to feel more accomplished.   I try to carve out moments to satisfy my leisure goals while beginning to prepare things for my classes. I watch women’s Olympic soccer for the sake of both enjoyment and procrastination. Soon, it’s mid-August, and then it’s the end, and the whole month I feel a creeping sense of frustration. In June, the summer feels wide open. It’s freedom!  I know many teachers think of it as a “freedom from.” It’s a break from the early mornings, the capriciousness of young people, the grading, the planning. I try to remember that a teacher’s summer really is a “freedom to.” I want to grab the freedom to do more things than are reasonably possible, and it is that optimism in June that causes regret in August. In a way, it’s no different than how I felt as a child. The summer wanes, and real life presents itself again. It is bittersweet, but it comes with the season, and feels as familiar to me as the changing of the leaves.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Randon Billings Noble is a creative nonfiction writer living in Washington, DC.  A graduate of NYU’s MFA program and a former teacher of writing at American University, she currently writes the blog From the Hatchery while raising her 17-month-old twins.  Her essays have appeared in the Modern Love column of The New York Times, The Massachusetts Review, Passages North and elsewhere.  You can read more from her at fromthehatchery.com, randonbillingsnoble.com, and on Twitter (@randonnoble).  When I was halfway through my one and only pregnancy, I stopped reading.

Before this I had always read.  I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read, and I was always a little jealous when I read about others learning to read – when C-A-T became “cat” and leapt off the page and into imagination.  According to my parents, when I was three years old we were driving by a billboard and I read “Rustoleum” right off it.  Rustoleum.  Impressive . . . but it doesn’t exactly leap into imagination.

In high school I tore through the classics assigned by my English teachers as well as the Sweet Valley High series I discovered on my own.  In college I branched out into Women’s Literature and Native American Literature and rooted back into Chaucer and the medievalists.  In graduate school I focused on Renaissance Drama until I defected from my English program into an MFA in Creative Writing.  There I read Proust, Bulgakov, Joan Didion, Andre Aciman . . .

I continued to read when I jumped the desk and became a teacher of writing instead of a student.  I read throughout my courtship with my husband and well into our marriage.  Then I got pregnant.  With twins.

The bigger I got the more immobile I became.  I was never on bed rest, but when your waist more than doubles in size and is heading towards the planetary, it’s tough to move around – even inside your own house.  For a few weeks I mostly just sat in a chair in our living room and read, but then I started to become stupid.  I couldn’t focus, even on the Sookie Stackhouse novels I was burning through on my Kindle.  Later I learned that your brain can shrink up to 8% during pregnancy.  Since I was carrying twins, I imagine my brain shrank 16%.

Finally they were born---each weighing well over seven pounds.  And for the next few months I was completely and happily consumed by them.  But then I started to miss reading.

When the weather got warmer, I began to take the twins out for walks in their fancy double-decker stroller.  One of our first outings was to the library.  Right by the front counter was a shelf of new releases whose breadth of subject matter made me almost giddy---a mystery set at Pride and Prejudice’s Pemberly, the latest installment in the Game of Thrones series, novels about werewolves (one starring Henry VIII no less), a collection of Alexander McQueen’s fashions, a thick volume of illustrated anatomy, a group biography of former North Koreans, a bunch of vegetarian cookbooks, The History of the World in 100 Objects.

I checked out three books that day and read them in less than a week.  My brain swelled like the Grinch’s heart bursting out of its magnifying frame.  I was myself again.  I was reading.

Here are some of my favorite finds:

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi St. John Fox, a writer, has gotten into the habit of killing off his heroines.  Mary Foxe, his made-up muse, objects.  She challenges him to join her in a series of stories where she, too, has a hand in their creation, and nine divergent fairy tales are the result.  The relationship between the writer and his creation grows more complicated, however, when Mr. Fox’s wife Daphne becomes convinced that he is having an affair and breaks into their narrative.  Will Mr. Fox have to choose between his fantasy muse and his flesh-and-blood wife?  Or will yet another story write itself?

One tale begins:

There was a Yourba woman and there was an English-man, and …

That might sound like the beginning of a joke, but those two were seriously in love.

They tried their best with each other, but it just wasn’t any good.  I don’t know if you know what a Yourba woman can be like sometimes.  Any house they lived in burnt down.  They   fought; their weapons were cakes of soap, suitcases, fists, and hardback encyclopedias.  There were injuries …

One day the woman stamped her foot and wished her man dead.  He died.  (And now you know what a Yourba woman can be like sometimes.)

She had a devil of a time getting him back after that one.

The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long and Jim Demonakos, illustrated by Nate Powell I was immediately struck by this graphic novel’s cover.  I wanted to know what these two men were looking at, and with such different expressions.  In a way, they’re both looking at the same thing: their hometown in Texas where in 1968 a civil rights protest turns deadly and five black college students are charged with murder.  Larry Thompson is the black activist who leads the protest.  Jack Long (a fictionalized version of the writer Mark Long’s father) is the white reporter who crosses the color line to film it.  Jack invites Larry’s family to his house on the white side of town and eventually testifies – for the accused students – at their trial.  Amid the hatred, violence, and misunderstanding in this story, there are also fishing trips, barbeques, rodeos, realizations, redemption and, ultimately, a sense of unity.

In this scene Larry’s family is at Mark’s house.  The kids are sent outside to play, conversation stumbles and an offer of drinks is refused.  But then Mark puts some music on …

We Others: New and Selected Stories by Steven Millhauser This collection features stories about a mysterious figure who emerges in a commuter town to slap people – hard – before disappearing, about a boy infatuated with a girl whose one white glove hides an unbearable secret, about the creator of clockwork automatons who finds himself in competition with a mysterious rival, about a knife-thrower who marks the people who flock to see him, about a museum whose endless bewildering rooms call people to return again and again …

These stories claim to be about others, but we are more haunted by the way they reflect back on us.

The title story begins:

We others are not like you.  We are more prickly, more jittery, more restless, more reckless, more secretive, more desperate, more cowardly, more bold.  We live at the edges of ourselves, not in the middle places.  We leave that to you.  Did I say: more watchful?  That above all.  We watch you, we follow you, we spy on you, we obsess over you.  We crave your attention.  We hunger for a sign …

The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont A sad tale of love and loss and the sea, but set at a New England prep school – not aboard the Pequod.  When his best friend and sailing partner commits suicide, Jason Prosper transfers to Bellingham Academy, a second-chance school for the privileged.  But even as he forms new relationships at his new school, he is haunted by his past and threatened by a secret he only slowly unravels.

One of the surprise pleasures of this book was the wordplay between friends.  Despite its rather dark plot, this microcosm of teenagers is full of intimacy, prankishness and wit.   I’ll leave the revelation of the title line, the starboard sea, for you to discover as you read, but this passage gave me a whole new appreciation for the creative usage of SAT vocabulary:

Cal’s mother, Caroline, had once made up a deck of vocabulary flashcards, encouraging us to quiz each other in preparation for the SAT.  Cal’s favorite word was ‘abrasive.’  He’d misuse it every chance he could, inserting it into sentences where it didn’t belong.  ‘This ham and cheese sandwich is mighty abrasive.’  ‘That’s some abrasive foot odor.’  ‘I’m going to get abrasive on this ancient history exam.’

And the book I just picked up this week: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed This book is a collection of Dear Sugar advice columns from the online magazine The Rumpus.  Someone commented on Twitter that she was reading it with a highlighter but should have been with a tattoo gun.   As I leafed through its pages I felt the same way.

Every page of this book feels quote-worthy, but I’ll end with a piece of advice that Strayed, in her 40s, wrote to a woman in her 20s – something I wish I had read in that living room chair, trapped under the weight of 15 pounds of baby, feeling time slide away like a tide and wondering if I would ever get some fraction of my brain – my life – back.  Strayed writes:

The useless days will add up to something.  The shitty waitressing jobs.  The hours writing in your journal.  The long meandering walks.  The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not.  These things are your becoming.

I hope this reading will be part of yours.

On baking bread (and losing track of time)

Baking bread is a deceptively simple task. Not easy, necessarily, but simple. I used to be very intimidated by the entire category of “yeast bread.” It had something to do with the mystery of the process, I think, but I also attributed a sort of aura to that rare category of people who bake bread.

To me, it seemed nothing short of miraculous that flour, water, and yeast could be transformed from an unwieldy, sticky mass into a round, golden foundation for a meal.

Everything changed for me during graduate school, when I lived with a roommate who baked bread on a regular basis in our very own humble kitchen. After over a year of lurking while she baked and feasting on the results, I decided to give it a try.

I was surprised to discover that, in addition to the three basic ingredients, a good loaf of bread is created with two guiding principles: patience and restraint.

Although a recipe may call for an hour and a half of rising time, this estimate is arbitrary. A lump of dough has a mind of its own. It will be ready when it’s ready. My advice is not to set a timer, but rather, after you have whipped up a batch of dough that is not too dry and not too sticky, cover it with a damp tea towel and forget about it.

This is the point at which it is very important to lose track of time. I would urge you to take a very long walk or a very long nap. Or perhaps both. Your dough will be better for it, and your body will thank you.

If, upon returning, that little batch of dough looks quite the same as when you started, resist the urge to poke and prod it and generally do something to it. While your dough is rising, it does not need you. Best to leave it alone and start up a new project. Something terribly all-consuming, like organizing your sock drawer or folding paper cranes, will do just fine. Or perhaps another nap is in order.

Hopefully, you’ll have started your dough sometime in the morning or early afternoon. And if your stomach is beginning to growl for dinner, you can be pretty sure your dough is finally ready for you to get involved again. It is much bigger now, and looser and wobblier, than when you started.

At this point, you may cover your hands in flour, punch down your dough, and turn it out onto a floured surface. This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the iconic doing moment in the life of a loaf of bread: kneading. But remember your restraint. Kneading is a transient process, a few moments of turning the dough and folding it back onto itself. Try not to knead the life out of it.

Now that you’ve spent a little time with your dough, I’m sure you’d like to pop it right into the oven. Don’t. Cover it back up with that tea towel and forget about it again. Set to work on the other aspects of dinner, which will hopefully involve sautéed onions and will definitely take a while. Get the oven going at a high temperature, somewhere near 400 degrees, perhaps. When things are beginning to come together and starting to look like the components of a meal, you can finally transfer your dough from counter to oven (minus the towel).

I know, you’re getting really hungry now. Me too. Don’t worry. It’ll only bake for a little while—perhaps twenty minutes or so, depending on the bread and the oven—before it’s golden brown and ready to toss into a basket and onto the table.

Your bread is hot still, so I suppose you’d better start with a glass of wine or a passionate conversation. Or both. Some of the simplest, most wonderful things cannot be rushed. They’ll take all day. It’s worth the wait.

Future Shock

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend-of-a-friend, in which he essentially said this to me (and I am paraphrasing here): “You know the main reason my wife and I decided not to have children is because I think the world is falling apart at the seams and we, as a species, are doomed.  I didn’t want to saddle another generation with this mess.”   My jaw fell slack and my response was an awkwardly managed and strangely delayed “Oh, MmHmm . . .” Having rather recently procreated, myself, I am, perhaps more sensitive to the insinuation that having children might be a selfish act and one that a reasonable and humane person would sacrifice, based on the state of the planet.  And yet, I was also surprised by my initial instinct which was to reply with, “I totally hear you and I mostly agree!”  Part of the reason for the bungled response was pondering whether the mother of an infant should be concurring that having children is crazy, all things considered.  It should be established that this person works in an industry that bears intimate witness to both the real impact of climate change and the barriers to spurring governments, individuals, and cultures to reverse course.  He also described a feeling more generally that he enjoyed a measure of freedom, loved to travel, etc., but his main thesis really stuck with me.  It got me ruminating about the rationale for having children and where we are as a society—you know, nothing heavy. In some ways, despite clawing my way to motherhood against tough odds and having a singular focus about it for years on end, I can utterly relate to the idea of not wanting children.  Like any haughty adult enjoying the relative ease of life and limitless possibilities that come with a child-free future, I have fantasies of coming home at the end of the day and flitting off to a movie or hopping a plane to Bermuda.  The beginning of the end of my first marriage started with a conversation in which my ex-husband declared he had decided he didn’t want children because, “What if I want to just, like, go to Costa Rica?”  At the time, he had never traveled outside the United States, save a solitary surf trip to Mexico, and he didn’t even have a driver’s license.  But this straw man danced around in my head and the phrase “Costa Rica,” eventually became code to me for “noncommittal.”

The other problem with this, obviously, being: When was I ever a person who was able to come home at the end of the day and flit off anywhere or hop a plane to anywhere?  Let’s face facts: I plan things.  Basic work-life functions and my own overdeveloped sense of responsibility slash free-floating anxiety have basically ruled this kind of behavior out for me a long time ago.  This truly has very little to do with newly caring for a living being.  I have always been more attracted to a cozy evening curled up with magazine, husband, and domestic beast than to painting the town.  I have a knitting phase in my history, I have hosted more than one “game night” at my place . . . you don’t need further elaboration, of this I am sure.

Traveling with children is a bit more intimidating, although I do have the goal of providing as many diverse experiences as possible for my kids.  While I realize that taking a child to a place that is inhospitable, inaccessible, dangerous, etc. is no longer in the cards, (which it never was for me, either, frankly) I don’t think my only option remains a Disney Cruise.  I have lots of examples in my life of people picking up and exploring exotic places with one, two, three (!) kids, even living abroad in somewhat “colorful” circumstances.   And the people I know who have gone down this road range from families with endless resources and major job security to those working with a shoestring and cobbling together freelance gigs to make it work.  So, let’s strike that from the list.

Now on to the issue of the world and how it appears to be unraveling.  There is no denying that we are in crisis with the environment.  But, how do I know that my kid won’t be the person who develops some sensational new technology that quite literally saves the world?  I worry much more about the way our politics, culture, and social norms have degraded.  Here again, I like the idea raising a person who might contribute positively in these areas, even better than we have.  And to experience the children of our friends and family and see what lovely, tiny human beings are all around us, I am increasingly confident that we can tip the scales in the direction of progress.

There is no doubt that some element of child rearing is profoundly narcissistic.  By definition, you are creating and shaping a person and then offering that person to the world in your likeness.  This is true whether or not you have biological children.  Then again, I still submit that if all of us out here---imperfect, but kind and loving (sometimes snarky)---raise children with good hearts and strong minds, there are larger benefits than just how it makes us feel to be loved and see ourselves reflected.

From Berchtesgaden, Germany...

Dearest Clara, When we lived in Vienna, one of our favorite getaways was in the mountains, just across the border in Germany.  We spent so many weekends there---we took you for the first time when you were barely two months old, and we absolutely had to go back during our return trip this summer.  There is something about these mountains that keeps drawing us in, and I suspect we’ll be going back for years to come, even though this wouldn’t be the type of place to top most people’s “places to go list.”  All the better I say, it just leaves more of this gorgeous landscape undisturbed for those of us in the know to enjoy!

Berchtesgaden can be a tricky place.  It’s so beautiful that you want to think it was laying here so peacefully forever, but the truth is that it had its role in a darker side of history.  And visiting there presents somewhat of a quandary about how to reconcile those two things.  For me, what I’ve learned over the years is that will always be your responsibility to know the history of the places you visit.  But be sure to separate the past from the future that any place is trying to build---by being aware of both, you’ll be able to feel out what your assessment is of the present.

In addition, I’ve learned the following from this charming mountain town:

• The view from the top is always worth it: There are no shortage of hills and mountains in this area, some that you have to walk, some you can cheat a little and ride a gondola  to the top.  I think so often we breeze through places like these and just take the time to see the town and move on, but the real treat is what you see from the top of the mountain, not the bottom, so make sure you always plan for a few of these jaunts when you come across elevation.
• Tradition should always have a home: When places are small and not on the beaten path, we are quick to write them off as closed and narrow. But some people work very hard to preserve their traditions.  This time around we stumbled onto a parade of local villages, all with families in their local variations of national costumes . . . all handmade. there are very few places where such craft by hand can survive.  Know when to let people keep their traditions.
• Beef should be expensive: This sounds funny right? But in the hotel that we always stay at, they often have “filet of local heifer” on the menu and the translation has always made us giggle a bit.  And it happens to be the most expensive item on the menu by far.  This is common in many alpine areas, even though the meat is local to the region.  But it takes a lot of time and resource to raise animals that are out on fresh pasture, with space and cleanliness and natural foods.  Of course there are faster and cheaper ways of raising animals, but ultimately, animals are living things and should be respected as such.  I guarantee you it doesn’t taste the same when you take a shortcut.  You won't be able to take the long way as often though.
• Change can come quickly: Much like near the sea, the weather in the mountains can change in what seems like an instant.  Many times we’ve started out in sunshine and watched black clouds roll in, erupting the mountains into flashes of lightning.  A little extra preparation and know-how will protect you in places where change is the constant.
• Protect what’s still clean: Near where we stay there is a beautiful lake which is one of the largest and deepest in the country, but is also the cleanest.  In fact, you can drink water right out of this huge body of water in any place on the lake.  That is a rare gift that this water has been taken care of so well over so many years.  When you find these pockets of clean air . . . water . . . land . . . it is your responsibility to help keep them that way---when you find pockets that have strayed, you still have to do your part.

All my love,

Mom